Hear Me

Hear Me is opening a wonderful window into the world of youth experience, one story at a time.  I work at the Community House in Pittsburgh.  Daily I listen to and record children’s stories as they tell me their hopes for their lives and their dreams for their next educational step through the Pittsburgh Promise.  I love this way of being with children learning from them while supporting and encouraging them to dream BIG. 

Last week, Jeff Baron of Saturday Light Brigade invited me to accompany him to listen to stories of young adults at the Mon Valley High School in Jefferson, PA.  I was excited about the invitation because it would allow me to become reacquainted with exceptional young adults with learning disabilities. A couple of years ago, through the Community House, we produced a film for Office of Vocational Rehabilitation, written and directed and acted by young adults with learning disabilities to guide others like them through the transition from high school into their next step in life.  In the process of working with these young adults, I had the chance to learn from them - to see the world through their eyes, to imagine facing the challenges before someone with a learning disability as they make their way into the world of work.  So, I grabbed the opportunity to renew those conversations through Jeff’s invitation.

Somehow through Jeff’s expert sense of direction we made it to the school on time. I confess even though I grew up in Pittsburgh I was lost, but the good news is Jeff not only knows Pittsburgh’s history, but its geography as well.  If you drive with him, you are in good hands.

Schools like Mon Valley are such special environments for learning.  I never fail to be amazed by the challenge special education teachers face in adapting what they know to meet their student’s needs. The teachers who were preparing their students for our interviews renewed my faith in teaching as a vocation. By the time Jeff and I arrived, the young adults 17-20 years of age were well prepared and ready to share their stories about their hopes for the new year in 2011. 

As Jeff set up his equipment I had the rare opportunity to observe what was happening rather than being distracted or worrying about recording equipment and sound levels. Indeed, throughout the morning as I sat beside Jeff I felt blessed to be there – listening to these young people.  Jeff in his welcoming manner engaged the young adults in such a way that they felt comfortable to disclose what was on their minds, what bothered them, and what they hoped to do and become in the upcoming year. It was fascinating to watch what can happen when in the midst of a conversation with a trusted adult a teenager opens up. Antwon, a 17 year old from Clairton told us of his concern for a friend, a fellow student who was shot, and his fear that this could happen again.   Others told less dramatic but just as illuminating stories about where they are in their journeys to become themselves and find something meaningful and fun to do with their lives.

It struck me that HEAR ME events like these offer young adults a way to open up and  validate their life experiences as they  find their voice. The voices of children with learning disabilities do not easily find their way into mainstream conversations.  HEAR ME can become a vehicle, a window, into the particulars of different kinds of youth experience.  The question is whether we will listen and adapt our practices to meet special needs to propel all our children on their way.      

 

- Wayne Peck,  Executive Director, Community House Learning Center

TFIM teams reach out to peers and younger students with Hear Me! projects

Students participating in The Future is Mine (TFIM) at Steel Valley High School are using voice recordings to document the ways community service projects help them learn and grow. Clairton City High School’s TFIM team plans to record interviews with peers in their school’s Academy program as a means of reaching out to troubled youth. Both projects would be terrific learning experiences in and of themselves. But they’ll take on an extra dimension — communicating important messages to peers and adults throughout the region — because they’re being organized around Hear Me!

Steel Valley and Clairton were among a number of schools that shared their ideas for Hear Me! as part of a mid-year get together on Friday where TFIM advisors and student representatives gave progress reports on their three annual projects and began planning for their annual Student Leadership Conference. Just a few of the others outlining Hear Me! plans were South Allegheny High School, where TFIM members will help elementary students produce stories; Elizabeth Forward High School, where the TFIM team hopes to work with English teachers to engage senior class students in voicing their aspirations and visions for the future; and Thomas Jefferson High School where TFIM members want to reach out to freshmen to discuss the ups and downs of transitioning to high school so that they can share the observations with rising eighth graders.

  At the meeting, Jen and Jessica from the staff at Carnegie Mellon University’s Create Lab joined the teams at the offices of The Consortium for Public Education, which organizes and supports TFIM. They offered our advisors any help they need putting together Hear Me! projects and told them about tools teachers can access — including lesson plans —by registering on Tell-Port, at http://www.pghhear.me/

  Jen also filled us in on some terrific story gathering projects that are going on elsewhere, like one at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History where teenage docents are collecting voice recordings from peers visiting the museum.

  A couple of our teams also reported on Hear Me! projects they’d already completed, including one at Pittsburgh Brashear High School where TFIM members interviewed students from their school’s English as a Second Language (ESL) program and another at Brownsville Area High School, where the team engaged fourth-graders from Cox-Donahey Elementary School in writing and drawing stories. Both of those teams plan follow-up activities. The Pittsburgh Brashear team plans to further engage the ESL students with a field trip to CMU’s CREATE Lab and the Brownsville team is organizing more activities to build supportive “big brother and big sister” relationships with the fourth-graders.

  Pam Gaynor

Heide goes back to her Alma Mater for Hear Me! Last Thursday, Jess and I drove out to Elizabeth Forward High School to meet with Heather Hibner, Randy Sydeski and Brad Simala.   It was a great meeting to discuss how we can integrate Hear Me into Heather's TFIM peer to younger peer program as well as the possibilities of having Hear Me integrated across the Elizabeth Forward School District overall as suggested by Randy Sydeski, Principal of the High School.   What a fabulous thing that would be!  Jess and I were extremely excited and impressed to hear that they are using Apple Computers in their teachings.  Brad Simala, Prinicpal of William Penn Elementary had great things to say about the school and the students themselves and their use of technology in the class room.  We were excited to hear about the students knowledge and use of Garage Band and how the kids can easily record and edit their own stories for Hear Me.  Making the process easier and fun for all.  At William Penn they also have many clubs the kids are involved in such as the Nature Club and the Web Design Club.  As we are now creating conversation 'themes' for Hear Me, such as the Environment, Wellness, etc.  How fitting it would be to develop stories with the Nature Club about issues concerning the environment in our region!  We would love for the Web Design Club to help develop content and fun activities for our Kid's Page on the Tell-Port! All of the above would be a dream come true to see this happen where I grew up and went to school.  Afterwards Jess and I walked through the High School as I told her funny stories about my time there.  Of which I spent most of my existence in the swimming pool!  Perhaps some stories can be recorded underwater :)!   We stopped in and saw Heather in her classroom where she teaches English to seniors.  A classroom I once sat in myself.  Sentimental for sure.  Overall a great day at Elizabeth Forward.  We hope they will become champions for Hear Me.  Looking forward to it!

 

HEAR ME at SLB!

Monday morning, Jen and I met with the Saturday Light Brigade and about a dozen educators and non-profit professionals for a hands-on audio recording workshop, right in the SLB studio! Once we got coffee and crammed into the SLB studio (all 17 of uys, total), our morning of education began.  We started by having everyone discuss their interests in Hear Me and tell an early childhood memory – everything from crashing big wheels to getting lost in the grid of NYC.  After lots of laughs, the SLB team shared their strategies for eliciting high quality audio stories, teaching us how to use Zoom audio recorders, and how important the recording environment is to obtaining great recordings of kids’ voices.  The session ended with time for us to get out the Zoom recorders and practice with partners on setting up the recorders, microphone distance, adjusting audio levels, and managing distracting background noises. 

Although I think we all would have liked to spend more time together, soaking up more wisdom from the SLB folks, it was a very exciting and successful morning.  I was inspired to sit in a room filled with people who are dedicated to making sure children are being heard.  For example, Kristen and Sarah, two first grade teachers at Propel Montour shared their ideas for dedicating time to ensure their ever-enthusiastic students’ stories are being heard by their peers, their teachers, and the rest of the region through the Hear Me project.  David Pribish from PAEYC shared his vision for recording the stories of children who cannot speak.  Liz and Lindsay from the Mattress Factory hope to work with Hear Me to collect stories as part of their vision for an interactive archive for the exhibits at the MF. 

For me, this workshop was an opportunity to learn and a morning to be inspired by others who are dedicated to the Hear Me mission of gathering and distributing stories while empowering our region’s youth.  Thanks Larry, Jeff, Justin, Liz, and Robert for an informative and engaging morning in the SLB studio!

- Jessica Kaminsky, Hear Me education assistant

Today, Heide and I made the trek to Cranberry and are currently at the Regional Learning Alliance, perusing the tables and talks at the Three Rivers Educational Technology Conference,  hearing from Hear Me partners like Dr. Linda Hippert of the AIU and Greg Behr of Grable. We also heard from Hunter, a high school student, making the case for integrating greater uses of technology in classrooms.  Thinking about how classrooms still use textbooks from 25 years ago, the iPad seems like an oasis, yet kids use technology in their lives, all the time.

Right now, Heide and I are sitting on the floor in a wonderfully interactive “classroom” where teachers are responding to Discovery Education's soundscape of the jungle - two teachers are acting our a skit they created based on this soundscape.  A teacher name Brady is laying on the floor, acting like a sleeping farmer, while a woman named Sally narrating the story of the animals asking the farmer to stop cutting down the tree, stop destroying the rainforest.   Brady “wakes up” and realizes he can stop destroying the environment.  Next, I am laughing at video parody by a kid named Joe, a high school kid who is mocking his textbook because he can’t double click the picture of Frederick Douglass to enlarge the image.  There’s also a blues song about homophones to reach auditory learners - I’m a homophone baby/there’s another word or two that has my sound/I have my own meaning and spelling/but my sound is passed around.  Or what about the kids from Bucks County who made a hip hop video about GDP and macroeconomics.  Hello, School House Rock?

I am sure Hunter can relate – can us teachers?

Creativity and innovation are such wonderfully rich contexts for learning, but how can we promote contextual learning in educational environments that promote teach-to-the-test?What does a standard for collaboration and creativity really look like, and according to whom?  Later today at the CREATE Lab, we’ll meet up with Devontay and Michael, our high school student interns who dismantle computers and work cameras for major public events, among other things – can’t wait to talk with them about all of this. 

- Jen

Their story, yours and mine — is what we all carry with us on this trip we take, and we owe it to each other to respect our stories and learn from them. - William Carlos Williams

Steve Seliy from the Consortium for Public Education just read this to me over the phone, and I’m returned to the ultimate goal of this project, which is human understanding.   It seems like an almost contrived thing, we hear this phrase so often, but the only thing contrived is when “human understanding” lives like an intellectual concept rather than an event of the heart - there is nothing contrived about being touched and inspired.

Last night I took my own children to the Beechview library’s Halloween party. Leo was a bank robber and Eli was some kind of dollar-store, polyester ghoul (black and purple - yikes).  I met up with Jeff Baron of Saturday Light Brigade, who whipped up a recording studio in a corner.  We smiled as kids came out of the woodwork to record scary stories.  Jeff chatted with some teenagers, inviting them to tell their stories. I observed, fascinated and inspired by the spaces in between the storytelling, these gems of human understanding: a focused mother and son, quietly listening together; a group of teens high fiving each other after one shared about their new rock band; a headsetted tween quietly claiming, “Hey, that was a great story” after listening to how another child overcame a bully.

While it will be a LOT of great fun, and perhaps even impressive, to record 25,000 stories, my take-away is the exchange - what happens in between, around, and because of these stories – the wonderfully human moments where we encourage and learn from one another, just by listening.

 

- Jen Saffron

Greetings fellow Hear Me participants and partners!

I wanted to update everyone on the success I have had in the last 24 hours with the first public dissemination for Hear Me!

I spent the last two days walking through downtown Pittsburgh and Shadyside to pitch Hear Me to local stores, shops, cafes, coffee shops, travel agencies, hair salons, Dr.'s offices and more!  And I am pleased to say the response and acceptanace was 100% successful.  Everyone was thrilled with the project's objective and mission. And our wonderful branding and identity sold the project instantly!  People were thrilled with the visual representation.

I hit over 30 different businesses and had them select the best print media suited for their business.  From the kids cards, to postcards, to posters, table tents and java jackets!

As soon as the bulk of these print materials come in this week, I will be heading back out to provide each of them with their selections! We will be starting a page on the Tell-Port dedicated to thoses businesses who have helped promote and add further support to Hear Me.  Kudos to them!

Stay tuned for the posting of the list of vendors where you can find Hear Me.

This is great news for the Hear Me project as we move foward in this enormous endeavor!

More neighborhoods and counties coming next.

 

 

Thursday I rose at an early hour to drive south to Brownsville – the bucolic, early fall environs of the Laurel Highlands.  Fifty fourth graders waited at Cox-Donahey elementary school for their own Hear Me assembly, put together by The Future is Mine high school students from Brownsville High School.  I entered “the building” - as so many administrators and teachers now call their school – to the familiar hallway bustle, anti-bullying and healthy-eating posters.

 

It amazes me what happens when us adults get out of the way and encourage young leaders to emerge.  After introductions by Lynn Jellots, Brownsville high school French teacher and TFIM advisor, the high schoolers inspired a group of fidgeting nine year-olds to share stories from their young lives.  They wrote in mannered cursive, sharing crayons - writing, talking and drawing about themes such as, “Who is my Hero?” and “What Worries Me?”

 

Towards the end, Ms. Jellots opened the floor for kids of all kinds to read to their peers.  One boy read about how it made him sad that his mom had cancer, and that he saw an angel and it made him feel like things might turn out OK.  Just sharing this story opened up a new relationship between the boy and his teacher, who didn’t know that his mother was so ill.  Another girl share how it made her feel to be on stage, dancing and dancing…. A confident boy with a scar on his head actually introduced Michael Vic as his hero.  After the audible small gasps at that thought, the boy read on to say that Michael Vic was a QB just like him, and even though Michael Vic “made some bad choices, he admitted his wrongs and he is working to make it right.”  Out of the mouths of….