Students at Thacher and Westover schools took five of eight awards in News Decoder’s latest Storytelling Contest, won by Christina MacCorkle. The winners of News Decoder’s Ninth Storytelling Contest, clockwise from upper left: Li Keira Yin, Christina...
Inspired by Black Lives Matter protests, I offer a photo essay as a haunting reminder that the fight continues decades after the Civil Rights Movement. This story won a third prize in News Decoder’s Ninth Storytelling Contest. With my photography project, I...
The Black Lives Matter movement has stirred young people around the globe and raised hopes that racism and police brutality against Blacks can be curbed. For many elders, the hopes are tinged by nagging fears that a generation from now race relations will remain strained and injustices will persist. Lucy Bird, a 17-year-old student at Westover School, captures those worries in her haunting series of photos that juxtapose iconic images from the U.S. Civil Rights Movement with glimpses from BLM protests.
Exercise: Ask your students to apply their photo skills to create a visual essay that manipulates existing photographs to capture their concerns about the future.
Playing in a rock band helped me see that in these polarized times, we need to listen to hateful views to heal divisions and save democracy. Black Lives Matter protesters brawl with supporters of then U.S. President Donald Trump, Huntington Beach, California, 6 June...
It’s a common lament that we live in polarized times. Echo chambers, confirmation bias, troll factories — these are terms we’re all too familiar with now because they identify a problem that is besetting politics and democracy. Vicki Flier Hudson tackles the issue head-on, but unlike so many writers, she takes off the ideological blinders to offer a lesson in empathy — replete with mention of her rock band. She offers techniques at the end of her article that all of us can use. Teachers can ask students to identify an abhorrent point of view and explain why someone could possibly hold that perspective.
A pro-democracy movement in South Korea offers lessons to two U.S. social movements — against police brutality and for a defeated ex-president. Black Lives Matter protesters hold their phones aloft in Portland, Oregon, 20 July 2020. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) This story...
Sociologists are the first to admit they are apt to speak their own tongue, so reporting on sociological research can tie even experienced reporters in knots. And high school students are not always interested in events of half a century ago. So it’s a rare pleasure when a student connects a pro-democracy movement in South Korea during the 1960s and ‘70s with social movements in the United States today, and renders sociology understandable to the untrained ear in the process. Christina MacCorkle of The Thacher School takes academic research about a country far from her school’s California campus and connects it to current events in the U.S., using simple language to convey complex academic arguments. Many students are trained to write academic essays, but MacCorkle enlightens those of us outside of academia.
For some, COVID-19 has meant grief, for others inconvenience. But the year has made us ask: Should we go back to “normal” when the future arrives? Protesters demanding more resources for public health and against social inequality, Madrid, Spain, 27 Septmber 2020 (AP...