*** Notice: For the protection of property rights, this catalog is available for online browsing only. Please drop us a line if you would like to receive a copiable version of this catalog. Thank You!


Content

Education and Society


Education and Society



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

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


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

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


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

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


MISS KIET'S CHILDREN

By Petra Lataster-Czisch and Peter Lataster

Kiet Engels is the kind of teacher one wishes every schoolchild could have. She is strict but never harsh. She is loving but never soft. Her patience in endless.

Many of Miss Kiet's pupils are refugees who have just arrived in Holland. Everything is new and confusing. Some are quarrelsome and headstrong. But Miss Kiet's firm but loving hand brings calm and awakens interest. She not only teaches her pupils to read and write Dutch, but also helps them learn to solve problems together and respect one another. Slowly the children gain skills and confidence.

Haya is at first impetuous, yet fearful. Little by little, Miss Kiet helps her to find her friendly side. Leanne is quiet and lonely. But after a few months she able to tell everyone, in Dutch, that she loves Branche. Jorj has trouble sleeping and is unruly. His little brother Maksim has terrible nightmares. Miss Kiet's tenacity helps Jorj discover that learning can be worthwhile and even fun.

By observation alone, without interviews or voice-over, the film focuses on four refugee children of different nationalities. Pursuing their perspective, the camera follows at close hand their struggles to learn a new language, their fights, their friendships and their first loves.

By the end of the documentary, an affectionate community has grown¡Xthe fruit of a teacher's patience and dedication. A film of many touching moments, some of them hilarious, MISS KIET'S CHILDREN chronicles changes that are small yet at the same time immense.


DVD (English, Dutch, Color, With English Subtitles) / 2016 / 113 minutes

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


BRITAIN'S BIGGEST PRIMARY SCHOOL EPISODE 1

Inside an extraordinary institution

This intimately observed series, filmed over the course of two school terms, features Gascoigne Primary School in Barking, London - Britain's biggest primary school. More than 1,100 pupils, 38 classes, 39 teachers and over 160 staff in total, share the same challenges as most schools, but on an epic scale!

The series tells compelling stories both in and out of the classroom. Dramatic, emotional and inspiring, meet the pupils, parents and teaching staff as they deal with the day-to-day chaos and drama of this supersize primary school.

Note: This BBC production not available in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Mainland China, Japan, USA, Canada.


DVD / 2015 / 45 minutes

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


BRITAIN'S BIGGEST PRIMARY SCHOOL EPISODE 2

Inside an extraordinary institution

This intimately observed series, filmed over the course of two school terms, features Gascoigne Primary School in Barking, London - Britain's biggest primary school. More than 1,100 pupils, 38 classes, 39 teachers and over 160 staff in total, share the same challenges as most schools, but on an epic scale!

The series tells compelling stories both in and out of the classroom. Dramatic, emotional and inspiring, meet the pupils, parents and teaching staff as they deal with the day-to-day chaos and drama of this supersize primary school.

Note: This BBC production not available in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Mainland China, Japan, USA, Canada.


DVD / 2015 / 45 minutes

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


BRITAIN'S BIGGEST PRIMARY SCHOOL EPISODE 3

Inside an extraordinary institution

This intimately observed series, filmed over the course of two school terms, features Gascoigne Primary School in Barking, London - Britain's biggest primary school. More than 1,100 pupils, 38 classes, 39 teachers and over 160 staff in total, share the same challenges as most schools, but on an epic scale!

The series tells compelling stories both in and out of the classroom. Dramatic, emotional and inspiring, meet the pupils, parents and teaching staff as they deal with the day-to-day chaos and drama of this supersize primary school.

Note: This BBC production not available in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Mainland China, Japan, USA, Canada.


DVD / 2015 / 45 minutes

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


BRITAIN'S BIGGEST PRIMARY SCHOOL EPISODE 4

Inside an extraordinary institution

This intimately observed series, filmed over the course of two school terms, features Gascoigne Primary School in Barking, London - Britain's biggest primary school. More than 1,100 pupils, 38 classes, 39 teachers and over 160 staff in total, share the same challenges as most schools, but on an epic scale!

The series tells compelling stories both in and out of the classroom. Dramatic, emotional and inspiring, meet the pupils, parents and teaching staff as they deal with the day-to-day chaos and drama of this supersize primary school.

Note: This BBC production not available in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Mainland China, Japan, USA, Canada.


DVD / 2015 / 45 minutes

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


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

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


EDUCATION INC

By Brian Malone

American public education is at a crossroads. For years now, public schools across the country have been struggling, desperately short on funds while facing extreme political pressure to improve student performance.

For advocates of public education, these struggles have been a major cause for concern. But for advocates of privatization, they've been a highly profitable business opportunity.

Education, Inc. is a film about the accelerating movement to privatize America's public schools. Filmmaker and parent Brian Malone travels to public school districts across the country to see for himself what the privatization movement is all about, and to determine what it would mean for his own kids if we abandoned our public school system.

Weaving striking footage from school protests and raucous school board meetings with commentary from some of the best-known educators in the country, Malone shows how private investors, large education corporations, and other for-profit interests have been quietly and systematically privatizing America's public education system under the banner of "school choice." Along the way, he clarifies the key issues at stake, and makes a powerful case for why public education matters.

The result is a powerful and deeply personal look at a pivotal moment in the history of American education.


DVD (With English Subtitles) / 2015 / 60 minutes

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


FLY BY LIGHT

By Ellie Walton and HawaH

Fly By Light is an intimate exploration of young people seeking to overcome the violence in their lives and create a new path for their future by connecting to a world outside their neighborhoods.

In Washington, DC, where high school dropout rates average 40%, a group of teenagers participates in an ambitious peace education youth program that takes them out of their tough neighborhoods and into the beautiful mountains of West Virginia. For the first time in their lives, Mark, Asha, Martha, and Corey play in mountain streams, sing under the stars, and confront the entrenched abuse, violence and neglect of their past.

The week-long outing is part of the 9 month Fly By Light program that uses nature immersion, music, art, conflict resolution, and social-emotional learning techniques to help young people overcome the trauma, grief and anger they often hold inside - and that holds them back.

Taken outside their comfort zone, and showered with support from caring mentors, we witness the city walls come down and their full selves emerge, armed with a greater sense of life's possibilities. The film follows the four as they return home, where each continues over the next year to face different hurdles and roadblocks they must confront to build a better life.

The film provides a window into the immense pain and challenges that many young people carry today, while also showing their incredible capacity for transformation when given the support and tools to better understand themselves and their potential, and to connect with others in a positive way.


DVD (Region 1, Closed Captioned) / 2015 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 59 minutes

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


OYLER: ONE SCHOOL, ONE YEAR

By Amy Scott

Can a school save a community?

OYLER profiles how a "community school" helped fuel a dramatic turnaround in one of Cincinnati's most poverty-stricken neighborhoods, part of a growing national movement to help poor children succeed by meeting their basic health, social, and nutritional needs at school.

Before 2006, very few kids from the Lower Price Hill area finished high school, much less went to college. The neighborhood is Urban Appalachian - an insular community with roots in the coal mining towns of Kentucky and West Virginia. The local Oyler School only went through 8th grade. After that, rather than ride the bus out of the neighborhood for high school, most kids dropped out.

Under long-time Principal Craig Hockenberry's leadership, Oyler School has transformed into a "community learning center," serving kids from preschool through 12th grade. Oyler is open year-round, from early morning until late at night. The school provides breakfast, lunch and dinner, and sends hungry kids home with food on weekends. Students can walk down the hall to access a health clinic, vision center, and mental health counseling.

Oyler's students are now graduating from high school and matriculating to college in record numbers. Oyler has graduated more students in the neighborhood from high school in the recent years than in the collective 85 prior years.

Based on the award-winning Marketplace radio series "One School, One Year," OYLER takes viewers through a year at the school, focusing on Hockenberry's mission to transform a community, and on senior Raven Gribbins' quest to be the first in her troubled family to finish high school and go to college.


DVD (Region 1, Closed Captioned) / 2015 / (Grades 10-Adult) / 56 minutes

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


SCHOOL THAT TURNED CHINESE, THE - EPISODE 1

An education culture clash

Two education systems go head to head in this fascinating documentary series that brings Chinese teaching techniques to British teenagers, looking at whether the high-ranking Chinese education system can teach UK educators a lesson.

In a unique experiment, five teachers from China take over the education of 50 teenagers in a Hampshire school to see whether the high-ranking Chinese education system can teach us a lesson. Will the harsh regime of long days and strict discipline produce superior students? Or will the clash of two cultures create chaos in the classroom? After four weeks, the Chinese and British systems will go head to head with the whole year group sitting exams to see which teaching style gets the best results. Day one of the experiment proves a shock for everyone, and there are tears when the teenagers discover just how competitive the Chinese teachers expect them to be.

Note: This BBC production not available in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Mainland China, Japan, USA, Canada.


DVD / 2015 / 50 mintues

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


SCHOOL THAT TURNED CHINESE, THE - EPISODE 2

An education culture clash

Two education systems go head to head in this fascinating documentary series that brings Chinese teaching techniques to British teenagers, looking at whether the high-ranking Chinese education system can teach UK educators a lesson.

As the project continues, the kids rebel against the harsh regime of long days and strict discipline. Behaviour in the Chinese School gets worse, with the Chinese teachers struggling to deliver their lessons. Word gets back to the British headmaster and he decides it's time to intervene.

Note: This BBC production not available in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Mainland China, Japan, USA, Canada.


DVD / 2015 / 50 mintues

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


SCHOOL THAT TURNED CHINESE, THE - EPISODE 3

An education culture clash

Two education systems go head to head in this fascinating documentary series that brings Chinese teaching techniques to British teenagers, looking at whether the high-ranking Chinese education system can teach UK educators a lesson.

It is exam week at Chinese School but, after recent discipline problems, the Chinese teachers are playing catch-up against their British counterparts. Can their 50 kids knuckle down for the exams and show benefits from the Chinese approach? And which system will triumph, the Chinese or the British?

Note: This BBC production not available in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Mainland China, Japan, USA, Canada.


DVD / 2015 / 50 mintues

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


DIE BEFORE BLOSSOM

By Ariani Djalal

Almost 70 years after independence and 10 years after the installation of the first democratically elected president, the educational system in Indonesia is increasingly being influenced by Islamic values. This observational documentary follows two girls and their families during a crucial period in their school careers: their last year at public elementary school in the city of Jogyakarta in central Java.

Kiki and Dila are modern city girls from a middle-class background: they like to listen to pop music, are very interested in their appearance and giggle about girl stuff. At school, all the children wear uniforms, everyone prays together, the national anthem is sung and the girls learn how to behave now that they are approaching puberty. Although Islam isn't a state religion, its influence on the once secular school system is growing. The educational system is underpinned by three moral principles: piety, patriotism and discipline.

The strictness of the school regime doesn't seem so bad-for example, Kiki is able to talk her way out of studying the Koran. But once the final exams start to loom, things suddenly get very serious, both for the girls and for their parents. A lot is riding on their exam results, for the popular schools in the city only take those children who get the highest scores.


DVD (Color) / 2014 / 89 minutes

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


GROWING UP GREEN

By Bob Gliner

Growing Up Green profiles a unique statewide, hands-on environmental education program in Michigan, the Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative. For the very first time, both rural and urban schools across the state are working to increase academic performance by involving students in local efforts to improve the environments they inhabit.

This coordinated statewide approach to "place-based education" presents a national model for increasing student engagement by making education more relevant, while also encouraging students to become lifelong stewards of the environment.

High school students in an interdisciplinary science and math class in Houghton developed ROV's (remotely operated vehicles) to use in underwater explorations looking for invasive species. Across the state in Alpena, elementary school students use similar ROV's to aid Fish and Game biologists in their research.
In Lansing and nearby Grand Rapids, elementary and high school students raise salmon in their classrooms, then restock local rivers, weaving science, math, history and art though their year-long curriculum. In Muskegon, elementary students plant a former dump site with non-invasive species, restoring a natural habitat, while learning valuable watershed lessons.

In Detroit's inner city, high school students renovate 800 houses with energy saving devices as part of their science and math program, while Detroit middle school students perform regular 'tire sweeps' of the neighborhood around their school, helping a local nonprofit in its recycling and poverty alleviation efforts. Professional development is offered through nine hubs to help teachers facilitate inquiry-based learning and problem-solving, and to sustain school-community partnerships.


DVD (Region 1, Closed Captioned) / 2014 / (Grades 10 - Adult) / 27 minutes

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


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

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


NATIONAL DIPLOMA

By Dieudo Hamadi

Joel loads a stack of boxes onto a hand truck and weaves his way through a crowded outdoor market in Kisangani, one of the largest cities in the Democratic Republic of Congo. An orphan who lives with his aunt, Joel doesn't want to be a courier forever. But if he is to have any hope of a brighter future, he must first pass the national exam-the key to better employment and a post-secondary education. And to take the exam, he needs money.

NATIONAL DIPLOMA follows Joel and a group of his classmates in the two months leading up to their taking the national exam. Things start off badly, when the high school principal walks into a class full of students preparing to take a mock exam and expels Joel and more than a dozen others for unpaid school fees. Undaunted, the students rent an unfinished house across the river. The floors are covered in debris, there is no furniture, and live wires snake down interior walls. But the teens hammer a blackboard into a brick wall, set a cookstove on the floor, and set about teaching each other algebra, philosophy, and the other subjects they will need to pass.

What makes this verite documentary exceptional is its ability to capture telling details: the sign above the principal's desk saying anything is possible with hard work, just before he expels students over fees; girls brushing each other's hair in the downtime between studying sessions; the ecstatic and intimate moments in church and visiting a faith healer, as the students seek any help they can get.

As the exam date approaches, the principal visits the students and implores them to return so he can pay the school's staff. Meanwhile, the young scholars have discovered that the key to passing the exam may not lie in studying, but in finding a trusted source who can leak them the answers.

Director Dieudo Hamadi grew up in Kisangani and was one of the half a million Congolese students who took the national exam each year. NATIONAL DIPLOMA is a closely observed film that offers no overt political commentary as it chronicles the hypocrisy, anxiety and distortion in a deeply colonial system.


DVD (Color) / 2014 / 92 minutes

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


SCHOOL OF BABEL

By Julie Bertuccelli

Welcome to a one-of-a-kind Paris education program for immigrant children from around the globe. In her feature documentary debut, director Julie Bertucelli (SINCE OTAR LEFT, THE TREE) follows one class of students ranging from 11 to 15 years of age as they begin life in a new land.

Hailing from countries across the globe including Ireland, Brazil, China, Ukraine, Tunisia, Venezuela, Guinea and Libya, many of the students at 'La Grange aux Belles,' a school in the diverse 10th district of Paris, are asylum seekers. They must learn French as they combat homesickness, juggle weighty familial responsibilities and recover from the trauma of previous lives of social and economic devastation.

Their teacher, Ms. Cervoni, must exercise as much patience and skill in instructing the students as in her interactions with their parents. As she guides them through a rigorous school year and attempts to prepare them for the transition to mainstream classes, she is a key negotiator in schoolyard conflicts and cultural clashes and navigating complicated dynamics both inside and outside the classroom.


DVD (Color) / 2013 / 89 minutes

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


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

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


STOLEN EDUCATION

By Enrique Aleman, Jr., and Rudy Luna

Stolen Education documents the untold story of Mexican-American school children who challenged discrimination in Texas schools in the 1950's and changed the face of education in the Southwest.

As a 9 year-old second grader, Lupe had been forced to remain in the first grade for three years, not because of her academic performance but solely because she was Mexican American. She was one of eight young students who testified in a federal court case in 1956 to end the discriminatory practice (Hernandez et al. v. Driscoll Consolidated Independent School District), one of the first post-Brown desegregation court cases to be litigated.

Degraded for speaking Spanish and dissuaded from achieving academically, Mexican American students were relegated to a "beginner," "low," and then "high" first grade - a practice that was not uncommon across the Southwest. School officials argued in the case that this practice was necessary because the "retardation of Latin children" would adversely impact the education of White children.

The film portrays the courage of these young people, testifying in an era when fear and intimidation were used to maintain racial hierarchy and control. The students won the case, but for almost sixty years the case was never spoken about in the farming community where they lived despite its significance.

Stolen Education presents the full story and impact for the first time, featuring the personal accounts of most of those who were at the center of the court case. The film documents not only an important moment in Mexican American history, but also provides important context to understand our current educational system's enduring legacy of segregation, discrimination and racism.


DVD (Region 1, Closed Captioned) / 2013 / (Grades 6-Adult) / 67 minutes

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


REVOLUTION IN THE CLASSROOM

For some time now there's been a bruising debate about the balance of funding handed out to public and private schools. No one doubts it's an important debate, but many educators believe it has helped obscure an even more fundamental question about where the money is spent. Over the past decade, the Federal Government has spent billions of dollars trying to lower class sizes, increase the use of computers and boost investment in school buildings. At the same time, Australia's educational performance relative to key neighbouring countries has been falling. The question is why?

For some the answer is simple. Money is being spent in the wrong places. Experts point to a growing body of research that says good teachers are the major determining factor in how a child performs at school. They claim that too little money is being spent on improving teacher performance. To make matters worse, state school principals are not empowered to make decisions about how their schools are staffed and run. As a result, some good teachers go unrewarded and bad teachers cannot be sacked.

This program looks at the impediments to better teaching. Imagine running a business where you can't choose your own staff. Where you don't have control of your own budget to invest in innovative programs to improve the product you create. That's the situation many state school principals must deal with.

This program visits three very different schools and talks to the people who are trying to change the system from within. As they tell the us, it's hard work but it is possible to dramatically turn a school around and change children's lives.


DVD / 2012 / 45 minutes

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


ROOM TO BREATHE

By Russell Long

Inner city schools across the nation are in serious trouble. In many cities, about half of high school students drop out, and a similar percentage of teachers leave after just five years in the profession.

ROOM TO BREATHE explores one promising solution that has been tested in several dozen public schools - a self-regulatory technique called mindfulness that increases kids' focus and concentration, self-awareness and impulse control.

The film presents a hopeful story of transformation, following a young mindfulness teacher, Megan Cowan, as she spends several months attempting to teach the technique to troubled kids in a San Francisco public middle school that tops the district in disciplinary suspensions.

Confronted by defiance and contempt, Cowan at first runs into substantial difficulties in the classroom. But under her guidance, the students begin to learn the technique and eventually use it to take greater control over their lives, decrease stress, and better focus in class and at home.

Based on the experiences depicted in the film, as well as results at other schools and independent academic studies, the mindfulness technique appears to have broad potential to significantly improve kids' social interactions with peers and adults, to reduce bullying and violence, and to improve academic performance and graduation rates.


DVD (Region 1, Closed Captioned) / 2012 / (Grades 11-Adult) / 55 minutes

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


SCHOOLS THAT CHANGE COMMUNITIES

By Bob Gliner

Schools that Change Communities profiles a diverse group of public schools that are successfully creating higher achieving students in a different way -- by turning the communities where they live into their classrooms.

The film re-imagines what education can be, visiting K-12 public schools in five states across America that are engaging students in learning by solving real-world problems in a variety of communities, from economically and environmentally challenged rural areas to poverty-stricken urban neighborhoods.

High school students in Howard, SD, build an interdisciplinary curriculum around a plan to save the town's struggling economy. In a Boston neighborhood with a high level of crime and poverty, students learn to connect the dots between what their community seems to the outside world and what it might become. In a small Appalachian town, elementary school students help clean up an adjacent stream polluted by acid mine drainage from former coal mines. In Watsonville, CA, high school students studying Roosevelt's New Deal try to come up with a New Deal for their farming community. In Cottage Grove, OR, students help create a sustainable environment, while learning valuable science, engineering and math lessons.

In the film, administrators, teachers, students and local residents discuss their projects and the value they find in place- and community-based education -- an interdisciplinary approach which emphasizes hands-on, curiosity-based investigation using surrounding neighborhoods as "living" classrooms. By confronting and solving real-world issues in their hometowns, students become more engaged in the learning process and develop a stronger sense of civic responsibility and pride. Plus, the local communities benefit, as well.


DVD (Region 1, Closed Captioned) / 2012 / (Grades 11-Adult) / 58 minutes

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


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

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


WE ARE THE - OF COMMUNISM (WO MEN SHI GONG CHAN ZHU YI SHENG LUE HAO)

Directed by CUI Zi'en

The mysterious closing of a Beijing school sends hundreds of migrant children on a desperate struggle to reclaim their right to an education.

The Yuanhai Migrants Children's School, which serves children of migrant laborers in Beijing, is shut down by city officials for reasons never made clear. The students and teachers manage to continue class, first by sneaking into the shuttered campus, then moving inside a ruined factory, and even setting up class on the street. One after another, these makeshift classrooms fail. Over the course of the semester, attendance drops from 720 to 16. Due to the dedication of the school staff and parents, the students persist in taking lessons, whether inside a decrepit minibus or in their teacher's tiny apartment.

Filmmaker and activist Cui Zi'en spent months depicting a social plight that threatens the tens of millions of migrant workers children in China. These students face both social and administrative prejudice due to their families' marginalized status. They are typically relegated to makeshift schools for migrants, with poor facilities and sporadic shutdowns by local officials. Following the personal journeys of students as they battle bureaucratic corruption for their right to learn, Cui exposes a crisis of social values in the wake of China's economic reforms.


DVD (Color, Mandarin with English subtitles) / 2007 / 94 minutes

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


END OF EDUCATION, THE

By Neil Postman

Using history of education, history of technology, and educational theory, Neil Postman paints a brilliantly challenging response to the modern crisis of education.

He reveals how in popular culture and schooling alike, there has been an erosion of traditional American narratives which once gave a coherent sense of purpose to learning. He exposes the new narratives of 'economic utility', 'consumership', 'technology', and 'multiculturalism'--and how these threaten the possibility of meaningful education.

Neil Postman presents his provocative redefinition of the crisis facing American education--and his definitive response to the problem now confronting us.

This program was produced in front of a live audience, and has been used in colleges, universities, and schools across the US.


DVD / 50 minutes

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<


TEACH US ALL

By Sonia Lowman

Sixty years after the Little Rock Nine faced mobs of racially charged hatred and became cornerstones of the Civil Rights movement, Teach Us All examines how the present day United States education system fails to live up to that promise of desegregation as it slides back into a re-segregation of its modern schools.

Due to storied histories of discriminatory housing practices which enforced segregation, case studies of the public schools in Little Rock, New York City, and Los Angeles present microcosms of the inequities and challenges manifesting in classrooms across America. Educator turnover rates become such that some schools just have to depend on warm bodies. Applying to a high school in a better neighborhood becomes more competitive than applying for an Ivy League university. The labyrinthine admissions process leaves working-class and minority parents out in the cold, and students believe their high schools are just pipelines into the prison system.

The film weaves together interviews from two Little Rock Nine members, archival images, and news footage to ask: How far have we really come in 60 years and where do we go from here?

FEATURED IN THE FILM
Elizabeth Eckford, Little Rock Nine
Terrence Roberts, Little Rock Nine
Sylvia Mendez, Civil Rights Activist


DVD (Region 1, Closed Captioned) / (Grades 6-Adult) / 80 minutes

[Go top]

>>> Add Cart <<<

***Price on web-site may not be current and is subject to modification by quotation***



Email :
inquiry@learningemall.com

Websites :
http://www.learningemall.com [ English ]
http://www.learningemall.com.hk [ Chinese ]

Follow us: facebook twitter linkedin linkedin