Institute

CREATIVE DIGITAL ARTS AND LITERACY

The YMCA Youth Institute recruits forty new students from five area high schools and three area middle schools around Long Beach each year. We also recruit fifteen Youth Institute Alumni 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 parents questions about the Institute. Our second meeting takes place in April with an assignment on pre-perceptions of the Institute for the students. We do this to see what their expectations are and to ascertain their computer keyboarding and writing 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 students 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 are absent 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. Students 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. Students 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.

Our actual summer institute begins in June and ends with graduation in early August (a total of eight weeks). Our theme is Creative Digital Arts and Literacy. Students are placed in project teams and carry out multiple assigned tasks towards the creation of a short film, 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 students 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 7. 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 literacy 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 teens 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 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, students will be 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, students 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 hiring of ten Alumni from previous classes who come back to do cooperative peer to peer learning, and a more advanced movie making project of their own. The Alumni also act as Teen Instructors at our annual YMCA Digital Arts Camp that we operate for three weeks. 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 students 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 students 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 and graphic arts projects. The Teens also operate an annual Family Haunted House Event that draws 800 people every year. One of our community service projects consists of teaching a high school class how to do digital storytelling using MacBooks, and digital cameras as part of the 21st. Century High School After School program.

A special program called Y-Impact Plus R Point of View allows youth to create Teen Resource DVD on subjects ranging from civic engagement to jobs and volunteer opportunities for teens in their communities.

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 fifty 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 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 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 is actual movie-making contracts from local non-profits. We hire Teens to make promotional videos for agencies such as Girl Scouts and the Long Beach Museum of Art. As of this date over twenty Teens have made $8,000 doing five paid projects. This teaches them business skills, job skills, and real world leadership skills. It also gives low income Teens paid opportunities where they learn on the job.

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 income levels. Everything that we do focuses on transferring knowledge to their academic goals and attitudes towards education 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. 

9 Principles of the Youth Institute