The Digital Learning and Leadership team (DLL) is constantly looking for new ways to engage youth in conversations around intersections between technology and society. In doing this work, our youth often identify issues within society related to technology and its access, advancement, and usage within communities of Black and Latino residents. This year’s Black History Month, DLL took a keen focus on how technology is being used to speak out against injustices enacted upon people of color and took part in the Black Lives Matter Week of Action across our sites. The Black Lives Matter Week of Action is a national movement within public schools where, for one whole week during the academic year, youth and educators alongside one another explore contemporary issues through protest, explorative lesson planning, interactive workshops, and projects all geared towards building understanding for the movement. At Q300 Middle School in Queens, students in the DLL program played through a video game created by a woman by the name of Momo Pixel who is a Black woman who moved to Seattle to work for a tech company and quickly noticed how people treated her hair and herself. The students were able to learn about micro-aggressions and how not all racism is overt and simple to point out. Sometimes, it is the little things that go unnoticed. 5th Grader Katherine playing Hair Nah by Momo Pixel at Q300 Now over to Flatbush, at PS/IS 109 Glenwood Academy of Science and Technology, where the Week of Action took over of the school's loudspeaker system, stages, and projection screens in order to display Black historical achievement for the school's population to enjoy. Over the loudspeaker, they played music such as “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and gave daily announcements of how Black history was made so that these youth could have more opportunity than those who came before them. Being that the school serves 80% Black youth, many students explained how they never knew about much of the music and history of visual imagery that was used to create disinformation on Black culture. Students explored the music video by Childish Gambino to talk about what exactly is a Minstrel show and why imagery such as this is used to tell a story about being Black in America. As well, students explored the history of film and television and how in today's time Black people have much more opportunity in terms of rights to IP’s (intellectual property). We discussed why a movie like Marvel’s Black Panther took so long to be made. Finally, students at the Glenwood Academy viewed a presentation on the Junior Scholars Program located at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture to talk about how Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther) got his start in education and the overall importance of lifting the voices of your own people truly is. Image sourced from the The New York Public Library’s Official Website under Schomburg Fellowship and Education Programs Last but not least, back in Queens at John Adams High School, students explore this and more within their other Global Kids programs. In fact, the students were so motivated by the game made by Momo Pixel that a diverse group of students consisting of South Asian, American, Black, and Latino students all came together to develop video games that point to even more issues affecting our world and culture today. They each agree that the work being done is only a step in the larger work towards equity and equality and they enlisted themselves in this mission, even if they still choose goofy photo poses. High schoolers in GK’s Game Makers Crew from John Adams Community High School
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