Institute

"CREATIVE DIGITAL ARTS THROUGH YOUTH DEVELOPMENT"

The YMCA Youth Institute recruits eighty-five new youth from 8th through 10th grades from five area high schools and three area middle schools around Long Beach each year. We also recruit fifteen Youth Institute Alumni (high school youth who have gone through the summer program the year earlier) to assist in teaching the new class as well as carry on the positive atmosphere of the program. We hold our first Parent Meeting in March. During this meeting, we set up expectations, review activities, have team building exercises, and answer parent’s questions about the Institute. Our second meeting takes place in April with an assignment on pre-perceptions of the Institute for the youth and do a pre-assessment of their skills and knowledge of technology, leadership, and youth development principles as it relates to them. We do this to see what their expectations are and to ascertain a baseline of their leadership, self perceptions, and technology skills. Our third meeting is in May, and focuses on planning the upcoming Team Building Wilderness Retreat at Kings Canyon National Park. These pre-meetings are held to give youth and their parents all of the information on the Youth Institute before the summer program starts and to ascertain their commitment to the program. If they have an unexcused absence from one meeting, then we choose teens on a waiting list to take their place before the summer begins.

We do our annual Wilderness Retreat before the summer program begins. The prime objectives of the retreat are Team Building and Diversity Training. Youth will carry out every task in their project teams such as setting up camp, cooking, climbing, hiking, and a map and compass orienteering course. Another objective of this retreat will be to teach Natural Sciences in an evergreen forest environment. We talk about wildlife habitat, eco-systems, geology of a mountain environment, healthy water tables, plant life, and the native people who inhabited this region. We teach both geometry and geography through our orienteering exercise. Youth learn how to read a map and compass and have to negotiate a two-mile orienteering course in their project teams by reading only degrees on a compass and paces in feet. The deepest impact of this retreat however is the diversity training and discussions that go on at our nightly campfires where we build trust during the day and teens tell stories about their cultures, families, and lives at night. This develops a strong bond between their peers and the staff. This is where the ‘family’ in the Youth Institute really begins to gel.

Our actual summer institute begins in June and ends with a Graduation and Film Festival in early August (a total of eight weeks). Our theme is Creative Digital Arts and Literacy. Youth are placed in diverse project teams and carry out multiple assigned tasks towards the creation of a short film, website and a Teen Story Magazine. We do all project based learning activities largely based on The Buck Institutes methodology on Project-Based Learning. The activities that we plan are for each project team consisting of eight youth to create a short film. During this process, they learn scripting, storyboarding, pre-production, production, and post-production editing. They work with iMovie HD, and Final Cut Pro HD editing software. They develop a screenplay through different word processing and presentation software such as Microsoft WORD, Power Point, Keynote, and Inspiration 9. They learn lighting, sound, special-effects in filming, locations, and sets. On a learning note, we expect them to develop both traditional and 21st Century learning skills, sequential thinking skills, critical thinking skills, cooperative learning and collaboration, real world context, and group work skills. We help them learn geometry and algebra skills through digital 3D editing software such as Cinema 4D in which they learn equations of depth in making and rendering animation within their production work. We also teach them digital music production using midi-keyboards, Reason, Garage Band, and Sound Track music software. Teens then create their own original sound tracks for their digital films.

We also do a compilation of individual oral presentations, writing and editing projects that we call the Teen Story Magazine. Each student is responsible for a page of the magazine. They learn how to tell a story, the parts of a story, and creative writing. They then refine their story through an editing process and come up with a one page fictional story involving teens. This is another multiple literacy development project with an emphasis on research, reading, creative writing, word recognition, phonemic awareness, graphics editing, and real world context. Both of these core activities fall within the range of Higher Order Thinking skill development based on the Complexity of Learning from Blooms Taxonomy.

As part of the literacy component, youth are required to do two free reading assignments over the eight-week summer program and do an oral storytelling presentation of their interpretation of the stories that they have read. This will be an oral assignment as well as a technology-based presentation. This exercise is designed to teach comprehension skills, oral presentation skills, reading, writing skills, and vocabulary skills.

Teens also create individual websites through learning web design and HTML. The software we use is Adobe Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks. The objective of this activity is to teach them how to create their own media, develop 21st Century literacy skills, creative writing skills, and technology skills all wrapped up into one exercise.

Through the range of activities chosen, youth are also taught to use technology for interactive presentations. We have found that this directly correlates with improved grades in the classroom where oral presentations are up to 30% of their subject grade. This is especially true in History, Science, and English classes.

Another interesting project of the Youth Institute is the recruitment of fifteen Alumni from previous classes who come back to do cooperative peer to peer learning, and a more advanced movie making project of their own. We have found that peer-to-peer learning is invaluable in teaching technology skills to children and youth. They learn hands on quicker with smaller ratios, and the teaching Alumni develop better skills through teaching the skills to others, the highest form of learning according to Blooms Taxonomy.

We follow the Service Learning Framework developed by Devin Hibbard, Facing the Future, People and the Planet. It puts service-learning projects in this order:
            • Identify Curriculum - The study issue/area of focus
            • Select a service-learning project
            • Develop Goals and Objectives
            • Connect to National and State Standards
            • Plan for the project
            • Develop Pre and Post reflection activities
            • Develop Assessment
            • Plan a Celebration

The service-learning definition that we recognize states: Service-Learning is a method of teaching through which youth apply newly acquired academic skills and knowledge to address real-life needs in their own communities. (Aberdeen Service Learning Project / Americorps)

We presently apply the service-learning concept to the Year Round component of the Youth Institute. Up to twenty youth per month go out to our elementary after school sites and teach computer technology skills to younger children through project- based learning activities. They are at each site one month for four days a week. They focus on basic computer skills, short films, news reels and graphic arts projects. The Teens also operate an annual Family Haunted House Event that draws 800 people every year. They also run our annual Family Picnic that draws over 1,000 low-income families from our programs each year. One of our community service projects consists of teaching high school classes how to do digital storytelling using MacBooks, and digital cameras as part of the 21st. Century High School After School program.

Our teens are also trainers for the 21st. Century ASSETs statewide program to teach digital media to teachers and administrators of high schools throughout the state. Our teens are also trainers for the national YMCA Film Makers Voice project to develop digital media programming in existing YMCA Teen Programs nation-wide.

During the school year, up to sixty Youth Institute Alumni a day visit the Youth Institute Digital Arts Lab to check out laptops, cameras, and LCD Projectors for homework assignments. They learn added computer and software skills. They get homework assistance from staff. They get help with college preparation, scholarships, financial aid and applications. They get individual counseling, and even do guitar lessons. They write youth led grants, and are even on two city council youth commissions where they have done toy drives and beach clean ups as part of their leadership service learning experiences. Youth Institute Alumni on average bring an extra seventy high school age friends with them to the lab every month.

One of the most exciting new projects of the year round program our new social enterprise youth led business called Change Agent Productions (www.changeagentproductions.org). We hire Teens to make promotional videos for nonprofits and foundations. We do technology consulting, purchase, set up, and training for clients such as nonprofits, schools, and colleges. We do AV for conferences and do graphic design magazines and brochures. We even do corporate branding and website design. These opportunities for our youth to be paid Interns in a ‘real world’ business model teaches them business skills, workforce skills, and real world leadership skills. It also gives low income Teens paid opportunities where they learn on the job. They also build real design portfolios and resumes of their work on collaborative projects that they can then use to apply for both jobs in the field and art colleges. We see this as the end pipeline of their learning where they get to use their skills both academically and in the workforce.

Youth Institute Alumni also recruit new Youth Institute participants into the program every year. They do this through handing out applications to their friends. All of these components together give the Teens multiple exposures to real world learning as well as exposure to different experiences not awarded to them in their neighborhood or due to their economic class or income levels. Everything that we do focuses on transferring knowledge to their academic and career goals and attitudes towards education and workforce in general. We aspire to teach them that learning is a fun adventure and that they develop self-efficacy through newly acquired skills and experiences that ultimately lead to self- confidence. This in turn directly equates to better academic performance through improved skills in multiple areas and a more positive attitude towards school, work, and their future.

9 Principles of the Youth Institute